In its press release, the Commission seeks to assuage concerns of over-enforcement. Here are some excerpts:

“The Commission has examined 11 mergers and many alliances in this sector since 2004 and this is only the second negative prohibition“.

“This is the first merger prohibition since the Ryanair/Aer Lingus case in 2007. In total 20 cases have been prohibited out of a total of more than 4,500 mergers reviewed“.

Such statements are the tree hiding the forest. With the GC’s confirmation of the Commission decision in Ryan Air/Aer Lingus and the very many decisions where the Commission requested heavy remedies, merger policy in the airlines sector is all but a soft one (possibly for good reasons).